Dr. Bogen of LSoft wrote...
sorry to hear about your inconvenience. We are in an ongoing dialogue with
AOL
but unfortunately sometimes we only have to find out with our customers
what is
going on.
What would you consider to be an appropriate reaction by us?

Dave Replies...

When we contacted your technical support, they immediately stated that
there were LISTSERV system-wide problems with delivering mail to AOL that
LSoft had been aware of for some time.  Tech support also immediately
offered suggestions that addressed the problem.  A day or two later on
8/27, I wrote,
"....given the *extremely* high regard I have always had for LSoft in our 7
years as a customer, I am quite dismayed that LSoft knew of this AOL
problem and did not notify its customers.  I am subscribed to both LSTSRV-L
and LSMTP-L and did not see mention of these issues from LSoft. Perhaps I
glossed over a message or two, but there was certainly no ongoing dialog
about this *severe* problem.  As much as I dislike AOL for its
"proprietary" ways, the fact is that AOL is the largest ISP and a problem
between LSoft and AOL is a *big* problem.   I hope that you will pass this
sentiment along and that LSoft will be more proactively in communicating
systemic problems to its customers in the future."

I received a quick reply basically acknowledging the need to communicate
better.

On a related note, one poster questioned why the LISTSERV backbone was
involved in this issue.  Well, UCOP.EDU is upstream from us and all our AOL
messages get sent to UCOP.EDU for delivery to AOL.  I can only surmise that
AOL's faulty spam blocking measures consider the aggregated LISTSERV mail
from UCOP.EDU to be spam.  However, it is possible that LISTSERV mail in
lower volumes (non-aggregated) would not trigger the AOL faulty spam
blocking.

Dave